Perquín

The trip to Perquín in the northeast corner of El Salvador was another highlight. I am especially talking about the transportation itself. The part from San Salvador to San Miguel was quite painless, even comfortable with air con and padded seats. San Miguel to Gotera was fine too, the normal chicken type of buss which you see everywhere in Central America (at least so far). Well, of course as usual, we missed the stop in Gotera by about half a kilometre or so, so we had to walk back. Not a big deal, though. At Gotera we asked for the buss to our final destination, Perquín, and finally we found our transportation which turned out to be a pick up truck with a 3 by 2,50 m truck bed covered with some metal structure and plastic cover. On this truck bed, there were already 25 people (I counted them), standing and sitting next to and over each other. Five of the 25 people hang outside the truck bed since there was no other place. Well, friendly as the El Salvadorans are, they made some space for us and we squeezed in onto the overloaded pick up truck. Well on the truck some guy was playing the guitar, so we got some entertainment. Two hours later, somewhat exhausted and hot, we arrived at Perquín.

Perquín is a tiny little village in a cool mountain setting. There you can experience the real Salvadoran village life. We had some really basic lodging and ate “pupusas” (a cornmeal mass stuffed with cheese and/or refried beans) at night and a typical breakfast in the morning (beans, rice, eggs, fried bananas, cheese and coffee). The main attraction though of this place is the “Museo de la Revolución Salvadoreña” which on Sundays also attracts lots of El Salvadorans, as we experienced. Also Perquín has a strong historical significance since it was the headquarters of the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front), the guerrilla organization. The museum displays the causes and progress of the 12 year lasting civil war (1980-1992) with photos, posters, weapons and histories of those who died in action. You get touched when you see the displays and see that it was normal people, quite many women, who fought in armed struggles for a better life in El Salvador and the fact that it ended no more than 15 years ago.

The visit to Perquín and the museum was worth it!

Bye for now!

Love,

Sabrina and Fredrik